The Rise of Io by Wesley Chu

Ella Patel is a con artist, a thief and a young woman who survived and even thrived on the streets of Cratetown, a vast slum that has grown up on the edge of the demilitarised zone in the aftermath of the great Alien War. And one day she found herself witness to a brutal murder, driven to intervene she never imagined she was stepping in the middle of the conflict between the Genjix and the Prophus

Or becoming the new host of the Quasing, Io. A quasing who throughout all of human history has been renowned for… her string of utter failures. This doesn’t make her the best or most useful guide for Ella now pulled into the war between the two big alien factions. A quasing can be a powerful guide - but when that quasing is Io?

In the story of Tao, we saw one of the most powerful and influential Quasing in the history of the Prophus. He has inhabited a series of powerful people who have completely and utterly shaped the world, who have achieved great things, influenced history and been at the forefront of their war against the Genjix. We’ve seen him take some extremely unprepared hosts, like Roan Tan and raise him to greatness, we’ve seen him inhabit Cameron to great effect.

Tao was a superstar, even in the most inept of hosts, Tao was a force to be reckoned with. Tao was terrifying. Tao was powerful. Tao changed the world.

Io is not a superstar. Io is an abject failure. Late to living in a human host, having great difficulty in influencing her hosts and having a long history of leaving them dead in her wake. Io is the excellent depiction of an entirely different kind of Quasing. Not all quasings are skilled world leaders, not all quasings shaped the world, not all quasings made a huge difference to world history - good and bad. And while Tao ended his arc wondering whether Quasings where good or bad for Earth and openly admitting that the Quasings are a dangerous invasive force: Io has pretty much given up on influencing the world at all. Tao is deeply invested in his host, Tao is invested in humans, Tao cares. Io is almost completely done with humanity

Through Io’s eyes we also get some really excellent insights into Quasing society when they were originally on their home planet, how their society worked, how these extremely alien creatures co-existed through the universe and how their hierarchy was structured. And from we see just how different modern Quasing are - they’re so disconnected compared to what they were and their hierarchy has been utterly turned on their head.

The Rebirths of Tao (Lives of Tao #3) by Wesley Chu

There has been a major shift in the battle between the two alien factions: the Prophus and the Genjix. They’re still in opposition - but humanity now knows they exist and is hunting them ferociously.

It has managed to save the Prophus from complete defeat, but the Genjix are still pushing towards their plan to radically change Earth - even while rent with internal conflict and the human opposition. Prophus must fight them - while keeping under the radar of the human authorities.

This book is excellent because it brings so many different storylines and balances them all perfectly

We have the conflict of the Tan family discussing Cameron’s upbringing and questioning what they did for their child, what his future looks like and how alien he may be because of that.

We have Cameron and Alex with the teen love affair and poor Tao lamenting the horror of human puberty (and frequent threats to jump off a cliff in his sleep). I loved how it ended, the reality of it and how it didn’t become sickeningly twee or consume the book.

We have Cameron - and I really love Cameron. He is incredibly skilled, extremely dangerous and even as a 15 year old far more dangerous than nearly anyone around him. He’s been backed from a very young age with vigorous training and the brilliant insight of a million year old alien full of knowledge and wisdom. It would have been so easy to turn this character into a juggernaut of Gary Stu dangerousness. It would have also been easy to turn him into a character who mopes around “woe is me why can I be normal”.

Instead while aspects of this are all present and inform his character, none to an extreme. He’s a really balanced character who combines all of these elements while still being very human and really bouncing well off Tao.

Then there’s Roen with his former relationship with Tao and the wonderful complexity this brings with both Prophus - since he’s the maverick former commander who doesn’t quite fit into their hierarchy even with Tao. And now he has a son who is possessed by his mentor which brings another whole level of complexity

And through that is Jill, effortlessly, perfectly competent in so many ways. There is an edge of the woman/mother/wife as keeper: she becomes super competent and a leader because of the manchild she married needs her to play parent. Jill’s an awesome character but the idea that a wife ends up having to be the caretaker of her husband is a problematic trope.

The Deaths of Tao (Tao Series #2) by Wesley Chu

Roen Tan has been off the grid for a long time, following his Quasing Tao’s guidance as he uncovers that Genjix’s long term plan is far more sinister than what the Prophus even imagined

Despite having almost abandoned his wife and child for this quest, even he has to return to the fold as the Prophus are increasingly being defeated around the world and the Genjix is completely winning the war. The war is now not just over who controls the human race – but whether the planet itself will survive.

  

The protagonist of this book is Roen Tan and he has grown so much since Lives of Tao. He’s much  more confident, perhaps too much so- but he’s also much more aware both of his skills and the skills of his fellow Prophus. He’s integral – but also a loose cannon – and both he and Tao have reached an excellent relationship together with humour, an awareness of history and lots of wonderful little asides that really point to a long and complex history between them

Jill, Roen’s wife, meanwhile is not quite as confident because of her issues with Baji but has excellent conflict between them. I love Jill and her political wrangling because it shows a version of the war between Prophus and Genjix that goes beyond physical combat and capability (which is Roen’s primary focus) showing both that the war takes place on many fronts and showing us a strong, capable powerful character not just due to their combat abilities (though we also see capable and dangerous female warriors as well making it clear this isn’t a gender role divide).

They’re all fighting a global war on several different fronts – military, infiltration and political – between the Prophus and the Genjix – and the plot is excellent at capturing the whole vastness of this, how everything is interconnected and the sheer scale of what is at stake for the planet with the Genjix’s new strategies and plans. The plot is fast paced, the action common and the emotional ride more than a little rocky as I keep clinging to some way the Prophus are going to turn things around – it’s definitely gripping

While the characters in this series are excellent and the plot fun and gripping, they also have some great insight into the whole idea of the Quasings. I think this changes a lot from the first book, because in Lives of Tao we were first being introduced to the world and the characters so there was less analysis of the implications of Quasing possession

The Lives of Tao (Tao Series #1) by Wesley Chu

  

This book is probably more sci-fi than what we’ve seen before but it’s different from your average sci-fi as the alien possessors are so free from your many of your usual sci-fi markers

That’s my excuse. But I’ll be honest I just wanted to read this series as it was well recommended and I already liked Wesley Chu’s Time Salvager and since it’s generally frowned upon to hunt down authors that intrigue you and demand they write the genre you like on pain of am armadilloing, I decided to read this one. And save my armadillos for another day (also spellcheck, I disapprove of that lack of “e” on armadillos but after 10 minutes of struggle, I lost).

This book has aliens, the Quasing find human hosts which they then influence – but don’t take over. They have no super powers, they give no super powers – they just give knowledge. Thousands and thousand of years of experience – the experience of all human civilisation. Civilisation for which they were behind a lot of it, with a huge amount of the most famous and influential people of history were possessed by quasing.

In many other books I would comment on how this is appropriative and how it dismisses real human history. Especially since it does a very good job of not just focusing western history (so much of our fiction is western orientated): Tao, the Quasing we follow, has most prominently been in the head of Ghenghis Khan and Sun Yat-Sen among others. So this would suggest putting he achievements of great people in history – great POC in history – down to alien intervention (which is borderline “aliens built the pyramids” level of problematic)

It manages to avoid that by the simple amount of influence Tao has. Sure he can guide, but he can’t control. He can enhance but ultimately the quasing is not in the driver’s seat. On top of that Tao is as much – or more, willing to claim his failures as much as his successes. He not just blames himself for the failures of his past hosts but also Quasings in general. I found the brief reminisces of Tao’s previous lives, how Quasing history has developed, how world history has developed and how Prophus and Geijix factions came about. But thin it was excellently balanced by not including too much – we introduced the history and goals of the factions without completely overwhelming the whole book or turning it into an info-dump.

Days of Tao (Tao series #3.5) by Wesley Chu

Cameron Tan is having a summer break – somewhat enforced by his less than impressed mother – a very important figure who is not amused by his latest grades.  It’s a break from his training as a Prophus operative – carrying the alien Quasling in his mind – but not too unwelcome

That is, until he finds himself on the front lines of World War 3.

This book was fascinating and frustrating

Fascinating because I love the world setting and the concept. People bonding with a Quasing, alien beings who then bring their experience and knowledge to the partnership while at the same time drawing human nations into their own civil war. I like the balance of this, Tao brings experience, knowledge and intelligence to the partnership with Cameron, but he doesn’t bring super powers or awesome abilities. He has insight and intelligence to offer, but skills and abilities are all Cameron‘s own. Including his great combat skills

It’s also easy to make a character a combat monster and call it done – but Cameron has a lot of stress riding on him that no amount of combat ability can really change. He has huge expectations laid on him, a large legacy to fill, demanding parents, a demanding Tao and hard decisions to make. In many ways, no matter how dangerous he is, he is not even remotely ready for this task. In fact, his doubts and difficulties make his combat skills seem almost surprising – which says a lot about the ideals I’ve absorbed from the genre. A male protagonist who can cause so much damage is surely super confident and can’t have any doubts! In Cameron we see skills and insecurity, ability and inexperience and a whole lot of doubts and pressures that he’s desperately not ready for

It’s also one of those books where you can sit there smugly as an audience and say “you’re making the wrong decision” because there’s an obvious, logical choice. But it’s easy to make those logical choices when you don’t have an emotional connection to those left behind.

I think that may be one flaw of this book – because while Cameron’s growth, conflict and emotional development is impressive and excellent – I can’t say the same for the people around him. I think it’s because the book is pretty short and there are a lot of people and they kind of just become names. I mean, from Cameron’s reactions I can see how painful it would be for him to leave a person behind or to see them hurt –but I don’t have any connection to these characters.

The characters are racially diverse, or generally seem to be. Cameron is Asian, and many of his friends from school are definitely POC – generally the characters are not described in great detail, though, so in some cases it can be hard to make sure. One of the main characters who Cameron is trying to protect who is so important to this war is Nazar, a disabled Kurdish man (and nicely complicated after his time as an undercover operative). Cameron’s fellows come from many countries including Iran (perhaps the character he is closest to beyond his mediate friends) and China which adds extra conflicts since these countries are allied with Cameron’s enemies which is touchy when a Cold War turns hot. There are, sadly, no LGBT characters

So why am I frustrated with this book? Because it’s very short and feels very much like an introduction, a prologue, more than a complete story. That’s not necessarily a bad thing fora novella. This book sets up our main character and the opening shots of a main story arc, We see the stakes - the terrifying global stakes as the first shots of world war three are fired, as well as the very personal stakes as we see what Cameron has to go through in such a short time. This is the prologue – and the story from here is going to be brutal and fascinaing

Of course, part of that frustration could stem from my belated realisation (after finishing the book) that this is The Days of Tao and not The Lives of Tao which means, yes, silly me has started a series half way through.